St. Albert will be implementing low-cost actions to address reconciliation with Indigenous people, while the city looks at prioritizing recommendations that come with a price tag.
Last week, council received the Payhonin reconciliation engagement report during a committee meeting, which makes 14 recommendations for ways to implement an action plan for reconciliation.
Council directed administration prepare a prioritized implementation plan of the recommendations, to be complete this fall with costing. In the meantime, they went ahead with adopting some of the less expensive items.
Those include: adopt a land acknowledgement, formal and informal, to be used at city functions; requesting nation to nation meetings with Indigenous organizations; Indigenous awareness training be offered to staff and council; an annual report be provided to council and National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation on local reconciliation efforts; the city recognize and celebrate the success and learnings achieved by individual staff and community members.
Coun. Sheena Hughes said she was pleased to see recommendations brought forward that are a good starting point to building new relationships and doing so “without having a large fiscal impact.”
Mayor Cathy Heron said she appreciated being able to pull out some of the recommendations council did not need to wait on.
“The intention of the implementation plan would be about prioritizing, and a lot of that has to do with cost unfortunately. But I appreciate pulling out the ones that we identified as a committee didn’t need to wait,” she said.
St. Albert launched its Payhonin Reconciliation project after a September 2017 motion in support of all 94 “calls to action” from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
